Putin blinked

2014 May 28

by Rick Holmes

I always liked Obama’s formulation that “there will be a price” for Russian aggression in the Ukraine. Not that the U.S. will bomb or invade or severely punish Russia all by itself, but that the 21st century world will respond to 19th century foreign aggression with non-military punishments. I’ve worried that Obama and Kerry overdid the rhetoric a bit, but the essence of their message to Putin was, or should have been, Vladimir, you are about to shoot yourself in the foot, and, while we can’t force you not to do it, we have to warn you that it will hurt.

Putin shot off a toe, and Russia is paying the price: Investment is fleeing Russia; its credit has been downgraded to near junk-bond status. It will cost Russia billions to integrate Crimea’s infrastructure with Mother Russia, and Crimea, struggling economically before the annexation, is now a basket case. Tourism is its top industry, but this year there will be no Crimean tourist season: Ukrainians, Europeans, even Russians are vacationing other places, even as Putin sings its praises as a holiday destination.

Let’s add it up: Putin’s seizure of Crimea has weakened the Russian economy, led to China getting a bargain gas deal, revived NATO, spurred Europe to start ending its addiction to Russian gas and begun a debate across Europe about increasing defense spending. Nice work, Vladimir. That’s why I say the country Putin threatens most today is Russia.

Gwynn Dyer writes:

Conducting an orderly retreat is the hardest thing not only in war but also in politics, as Russian President Vladimir Putin is now learning. His own desire to avoid humiliation gets in the way of rapid disengagement from a losing battle, which why he waited until two days before last Sunday’s Ukrainian presidential election to say that he would respect the result…

Putin has already turned to China as a new customer for Russian gas, but it will never pay as well as Europe did. He used to be able to play the Europeans and the Chinese off against each other, but that game is over. NATO sees him as a wild card at best, and at worst a real threat. The master strategist has lost his touch.

So much for the “Obama is playing checkers, Putin is playing chess” meme. This isn’t a great victory for Obama, though the sanctions appear to have hurt more than many in Washington expected. Mostly it was a series of dumb moves by Putin, and Russia is paying the price.

Re: Friedman. Who but Germany in Europe is going to increase its defense spending when their economies are at zero growth rate? Germany is going to increase defense spending? Germany?, when it knows the sucker US will always jump into any fray, real, imagined, or made-up. Obama is already sending military trainees to Syria. Seizing Crimea hasn’t weakened the Russian economy. It was third world to begin with. Europe isn’t weaning off Russian natural gas. It’s infrastructure is built to that end (Germany is shedding nuclear power and cannot sustain its wind power initiatives) and the US has made it clear it has no real intentions of increasing natural gas exports to Europe because that would endanger the US’s own energy independence and cause even greater fracking pressures (anathema to this administration). Where are the Europeans going to get their energy, especially gas? Friedman is whistling past the graveyard. And Obama is only looking as far as 2016 and is irrelevant after the 2014 elections. After that someone else replaces him and his policies (if they could ever be defined). That’s what Putin knows and is preparing for because he knows Obama isn’t going to do a blessed thing to stop him except threaten. Putin is just stepping into the Obama created breach and putting down his markers now.

Good, Lord, Don; would you cheer up? So far Obama and the administration have put escalating financial pressure which seems to have effected Putin’s standing down in a very dicey situation. No troops were committed, no Americans killed, no WWIII threats (except for bozo US neocon spouting. WTF more do you want? Or are you, like Kristol, McCain et all disappointed that war hasn’t been joined? Maybe you have Halliburton stock.

I was reacting to Friedman’s analysis. We haven’t gotten beyond the first couple opening moves, pawn to Bishop four, and somehow Friedman can see that Russia has been endangered. That is a classic example of pimping for an administration, Pollyanna writ large. His list is all positive numbers. If you wish to accept his lack of negative numbers, be my guest. I think it is a crummy analysis, the 1,500 word essay written at midnight due in tomorrow’s 8:00 am Freshman English class.

For the moment, we’ll ignore the fact that I’ve written more books than Friedman.

When I was reading Amy Chua’s new books, I noted on her biography that “In 2011 Time Magazine name Chua one of the 100 most influential people in the world.” Well, I didn’t even know Time magazine was still around, and I had never heard of her.

I have a colleague who, when in Washington, plays golf with Mitch and basketball with Barry. He is clearly one of the 10 most influential people in the world, he’s not in the Time list, and my guess is that you’ve never even heard of him. But a moron like Lee would probably interpret his usual job as just scribbling for a blog in his small town in middle america.

Even if we grant Don’s skepticism about Europe: That they are incapable of adjusting their energy policy to reduce dependence on Russia’s gas; that they are weak truffle-eaters who will bow to the Russian bear in the end, or whatever. Even if we accept the strange assumption that because Russia has a third-world, resource based economy, loss of foreign investment, the devaluing of the ruble and the loss of foreign trade and tourism dollars don’t matter to it (its $80B investment in Sochi notwithstanding), the question remains: What did Putin win from this affair?

The U.S. and Europe are more suspicious of Putin than ever. Ukraine is now united, with a pro-European government in control. Congrats on your victory, Vlad.

Not to mention something else that BBC is reporting that American news sources are not. Putin has insulated some of the oligarchs by buying out some of their huge financial interests, and those concerns are now being handed over to worker-ownership and smaller, non international companies, which is a hugely popular, populist move. No one in Russia thinks Putin has blinked. What Putin has done is internalize his economy, cut ties to Europe he doesn’t like, acquire the Crimea, acquire new ties to Asia, eliminate any continuing obligation to cooperate with the West on Syria, Iran, Cuba or North Korea, and has otherwise made himself hugely popular with anti Western political groups in South America, Africa and Asia by making Barry look like a powerless turd. Which is what Barry is. The Russians are laughing at Barry’s tail between the legs flight from Afghanistan, and marveling that all that great American technology can’t find the Malaysian jet liner. And there are a lot of Americans who like Putin a hell of a lot more than they like Barry.

Well, Rick, looks like you didn’t win Rob over to Friedman’s analysis, probably not Don either. It’s interesting to me how, on a more basic behavioral level, that so many people are still stuck in the wolf-pack (maybe baboon-troop) worship of alpha-male aggression, where the leader who’s willing to institute assault and war is admired, and those who possess the peacemaker gene are rapidly torn to pieces.

Even in the media, where you might suspect a little more reflectiveness, you have the Bill Kristols and Judith Millers who groupie for the political Putins, McCains and Netanyahus who just love to posture, puff themselves up, and risk sending young men to kill and be killed. It’s a deep human problem.

I assume that you include me in the wolf-pack, baboon troop worship of alpha male aggression. It’s a convenient accusation but has no bearing on what I said. You completely avoided responding to my main contention, that Friedman’s analysis only included negative things about Russia (positive for the US and everyone else in the long run) and provided no balancing about potential trouble if any of his contentions about what was happening or was to happen did not happen. Just, in Lee’s words, “WTF more do you want” when a situation Friedman and Lee and Rick deem finished when it has barely begun doesn’t warrant that conclusion at all. Perhaps you are demonstrating your own Obama wolf pack mentality, attack when confronted with reasonable questions about reasons for actions.

Don: I don’t know where you stand in the wolfpack alignment, I just think there are too many people using complex and fraught international issues to attack Obama’s leadership without due responsibility. Ukraine and Crimea are good examples; you have a chaotic mix of Putin’s testosterone and Hernandez-like male insecurity, balkanized government squabbling among far-right neo-nazis and Islamists, democracy-hopers, ex communist strongmen, westernized oligarchs and all intermixed with oil riches, mass poverty and corruption, that ignites into a conflagration, and Obama is supposed to wade in with perfect clarity and aggressive moves to dictate a calm resolution, and placate and please his sworn enemies at the same time. So he made some minor mis-steps along with some evidently effective moves, and we’re still not in a shooting war with Russia, while Ukraine seems a little more settled and less at immediate risk. Not too bad, I say.

Why is he supposed to wade in? Where is the UN or the European community? Why does it fall to him, and you and me by default? The larger question is as old as the hills. No one matures, not an individual, not a family, not a country, not a president, until they take responsibility for who they want to become. In this instance, if the Ukraine wants to remain independent, it is going to have to fight for it. Nothing the US will do will be of any lasing significance if the Ukrainians don’t stand up and say we are going to self-determine. In that regard they can appeal to the UN, they can ask for NATO help, and so forth. It is not about Obama or the US except, as Rick put it, the US is acting as empire. And imposed beliefs don’t last all that long.

Ukraine just isn’t our problem. In fact, real politik demanded that when Putin started grumbling about Ukraine, Barry should have quietly called him and told him he could have the whole stinking soviet empire if he wanted, but all he had to do in return is deal with Syria and Iran in a way that would allow the US and Russia to carve up the planet without lunatics mucking things up. You want to talk testosterone driven? As a lawyer, Barry should know that it requires more fortitude to hold your tongue than to rant about red lines.

Barry says tha the Taliban have generally accepted the central government and his proof is an abatement of obvious fighters. Meanwhile, aj reports that the Taliban are vacationing in Syria, where they will receive American arms and training, which they will share with aq, so that they can go home to Afghanistan and retake their country in 2017. The Taliban have been crushed. Putin blinks. And we’ve always been at war with Oceania.

The 21st century realist Obama understands what the 19th century romantic Putin doesn’t: Empires impose their own punishment, especially those held together by military might. We shouldn’t just give Putin Crimea; we should give him Afghanistan too.

One day Rob argues America should get out of Afghanistan yesterday, the next he sounds like LBJ or W, arguing that American must prove its manhood by vanquishing demons around the world and challenging the Red Bear to a duel. The reasonable path is moderation.

Obama is not a 21st century realist. He is a calculating politician from Chicago, Illinois. When Obama launches missiles into Libya, when Obama launches raids into Pakistan, when Obama uses drones with discriminate acceptance of collateral human damage, when Obama issues threats about red lines, when Obama institutes economic sanctions he is imposing his own Empire form of punishment. Obama is not moderate.

I thought the quote of the day came from the Putin aid a few days ago who said that you know that America is in serious trouble when the only people who want to be president are elderly white women and unemployable black men.

Barry did not murder bin Laden because he believed that bin Laden was a threat to the United States. He murdered bin Laden because it brought in votes when Barry needed votes. If that makes Barry a realist, great. But it doesn’t make him a leader or a thinker or a person who has his nation’s best interest in mind. In that sense, he is the perfect Chicago pol.

Because as I said then, and I said now, under international law you can’t declare war on a non-state actor. Bin laden and his group were criminals, which doesn’t justify the US violating international law. The US has been enmeshed in nothing but war crimes for the past fourteen years. So much the notion that the terrorists didn’t win on 9/11. They utterly distorted the American concept of right and wrong.

By the time Obama leaves office, he will have ended two wars and began none. That’s a pretty good record among modern presidents. When things happen in places like Libya and Syria that threaten regional stability and the interests of America and its allies, the U.S. shouldn’t sit on its hands and say “we don’t care.” That’s an extreme isolationist view. It shouldn’t send in the 102nd Airborne and launch a full-scale assault. That’s an extreme McCain-esque view. Acting somewhere in-between, using a scalpel rather than a chainsaw, forming international coalitions to pursue desired ends, are the hallmarks of foreign policy moderation.

Sometimes people don’t know what regional stability is. The governments of Libya and Syria didn’t threaten regional stability. The insurgent forces caused the instability and unless I miss my guess, the President and the progressive folks here on this blog were firmly on the side of the insurgents, hence for example lobbing about 200 Tomahawk missiles into Libya and ranting about red lines in Syria. The US contributed mightily to the region’s instability because, like some bad Star Trek episode involving interference in the affairs of a class M planet, it interfered in the affairs of the region. It doesn’t matter if it interfered for the purposes of protecting big oil or because it was manifesting the precepts of the Battle Hymn of the Republic. It’s been doing it, in true Empire fashion since we got in bed with the Shah. No one, including Obama, has been moderate in the region except Bush 41 and the Gulf War management.

I am using your own definition from above – forming (true) international coalitions to pursue the desired ends of all the members of the coalition – and I would add having them all significantly involved in the implementation, as Bush 41 truly did

Many, if not all, 30-year-old autocracies are inherently unstable. Regime change comes sooner or later, when the oppressed people rise up against the likes of Assad and Gadhafi, and it’s always ugly. It’s ugly if we do go in, it’s ugly if we don’t go in. Propping up dictators – if that’s what you’re recommending – has a pretty ugly history as well.

Yes, but we are actively causing and aiding regime change sooner – just like violating the Star Trek directive. I am not recommending propping up dictators. Let them rise and fall on their own if your prophecy is correct. Just because it’s ugly doesn’t mean we have to go in. Let countries evolve as they wish. Let them slaughter each other. Let them find Utopia. Why should we risk American lives, spend American money unless it is a true threat to our security? We are not going to replicate or impose American ideals outside of America. We have a hard enough time doing it in America.

After access to oil, the reason we are in the Middle East is missionary. You are saying it above. “The US shouldn’t sit on its hands and say “We don’t care”. It’s a version of the lines from the Battle Hymn of the Republic. “As He died to make men holy, let us die to make men free. His truth is marching on.” Well, the mid-east has been around for 5,000 years with unresolved tribal warfare. The US isn’t going to resolve the basic issue, nor is it going to impose its ideals on the region. It’s a black hole when people pursue that course of action. Nothing escapes its gravity.

We just added troops to Nigeria. Nigeria for crying out loud. Now the United States is on the radar screen of yet another bunch of yahoo terrorists. I don’t seem to recall any kind of national debate before American troops were inserted into yet another war zone on the side of a government in a country in which we have no interests.

Don: If I recall correctly, there was a threatened bloodbath to a rebel-held city that triggered the US and European intervention there; it wasn’t all about regime change. At least on the surface info given us. I don’t think you can equate Obama’s action there to a neocon dream like invading Iraq. And Yes, I wish Obama hadn’t cried “red line” over Syria (bet he wishes the same) but the misstep there is minor compared to invasion. And regarding Syria, there is now some doubt about who tossed the chemicals; Obama is softpedaling that issue, but it probably had a lot to do with his passing responsibility to Congress. So compared to everyone since HW Bush, Obama is quite moderate. Only knee-jerk Obama haters can possibly think otherwise!

Yeah, so now he is going to arm and train the Taliban? Nice job! I’m pretty much on record fro the 90s as saying that the Taliban were pretty cool. And you know, they never attacked the United States until the United States attacked them. So, for just a short moment, try to remember that bin laden was not governing Afghanistan and that Afghanistan didn’t attack the United States. The Democrats signed on to this farce, so the notion that Barry “inherited” the mess is just plain rewriting of history. As Rick, I’m sure, remembers, I responded to the Afghanistan fiasco by writing a hagiography about Jennette Rankin for my Monday column. I remember how well that went over.

What? are you crazy? when Barry got into office, we had boots on the ground in 122 countries. As he leaves office, we’re going to have boots on the ground in 132. You are playing war games if you say that Barry hasn’t started wars. That’s like saying that Nixon didn’t start any wars because he inherited Vietnam. Nevermind Cambodia. Laos. Thailand. Burma.

And, Rick, I’m not saying either of those things. I’m saying we don’t have a dog in the fight in Ukraine or Israel, so we should just shut up. And if we aren’t fighting in Afghanistan anymore, let’s get our troops the hell out of there. Pick the places where we do have interests, and patrol the fringes of the empire and defend them aggressively if attacked, but otherwise its time to bring the troops home.

I’ve always been ambivalent about Afghanistan, ready to cut-and-run more often than not. But 9,800 troops isn’t much to protect our considerable investment in the Afghan security forces, and I’m hopeful the next president won’t be as bad as Karzai.

Maybe it was at West Point that Obama said Afghanistan isn’t going to be a perfect country snd we’re not going to make it one, but we do have interests there. I don’t get briefings, but I bet a big interest is keeping an eye on AQ affiliates and other bad guys, and there’s not another CIA host that’s very accessible.

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